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A couple has just got ______ in a secret ceremony. John Lambton, the 1st Earl of Durham, who is posh and has land and ______, and Harriet, the illegitimate daughter of the Earl of Cholmondeley, who has no ______ and little social status but is very ______, are now man and wife.
Their families are ______– and have tried desperately to stop the ______. But the couple are ‘modern’, which means they believe that in marriage, love should come first and ______ considerations second. They’ve gone to Gretna Green, a village just inside Scotland, to escape English law – and are exemplars of the new philosophy of ______, which privileges feeling over reason and impulse over tradition.
Romanticism transforms ______. The old system of marrying for political or ______ advantage slowly crumbles around the world. The village of Gretna Green becomes ______ with illicit ______ , and John and Harriet are among ______of English ______ in the late 18th and 19th centuries who elope there. The public appetite for stories of romantic dissent is such that the local priest publishes some bestselling memoirs of his time there, full of daring coach-rides ______ the border, and the wrath of unconsulted fathers who reach the runaway children too late.
Gretna Green ______ an important place ______ there is a growing belief that marriage should be the consequence of love. And that if two people love each other that alone is what matters. Income, the standing of the wider family, career and how the parents-in-law might get on seems irrelevant. And more than that: they begin to be cast not as wise, serious ______ which really ought to be taken into account, but as things that could only seem relevant to gouty fathers, snobbish aunts and dried up conventional people with no care for the happiness of a couple.
Mostly, when we want to do something we take advice if we can from people who have done it before. Gretna Green stands for a ______ shift in thinking, around relationships, which is ______ today: the assumption that people who have already had marriages are likely to be very poor advisors and guides to the young. Love is ______ to be an enthusiasm, not a skill.
